Fred Kaplan writes: Granted, the crisis in Ukraine is worrisome, Vladimir Putin’s behavior is unpredictable, and the 30,000 Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border arouse a sense of dread and danger unfelt since the Cold War. That said, the alarmism is getting out of hand. Legitimate concerns are spiraling into war chants and trembling, a weird mix of paranoia and nostalgia, needlessly inflating tensions and severely distorting the true picture.

A bizarre example of this is a March 26 New York Times story headlined “Military Cuts Render NATO Less Formidable as Deterrent to Russia.” The normally seasoned reporters, Helene Cooper and Steven Erlanger, note that the United States “has drastically cut back its European forces from a decade ago.” For instance, during “the height of the Cold War” (which was actually three decades ago, but let that pass), we had about 400,000 combat-ready forces defending Western Europe—whereas now we have about 67,000. In terms of manpower, weapons, and other military equipment, they write, “the American military presence” in Europe is “85 percent smaller than it was in 1989.”

Yet the article contains not one word about the decline of Russia’s “military presence” in Europe since that time. It only takes one word to sum up that topic: disappeared. The once-mighty Warsaw Pact—the Russian-led alliance that faced NATO troops along the East-West German border—is no more. And its erstwhile frontline nations—East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland—have been absorbed into the West, indeed into NATO. This is hardly an esoteric fact, yet its omission makes the Times’ trend lines seem much scarier than they really are.

Nor, even with its own borders, is the Russian army the formidable force it once. According to data gathered by GlobalSecurity.org, Russian troop levels have declined since 1990 from 1.5 million to 321,000. Over the same period, tank divisions have been slashed from 46 to five, artillery divisions from 19 to five, motorized rifle divisions from 142 to 19, and so it goes across the ranks.

In short, the United States “drastically cut back its European forces” because there’s no longer a threat to justify those forces. Nor does Putin’s seizure of Crimea augur a resumption of that threat—not to any degree that warrants anything like a restoration of NATO circa ’89. [Continue reading…]

At Open Democracy, Svitlana Kobzar wites: The argument for splitting Ukraine is that this would merely establish de jure a situation that already exists de facto, because Ukraine is deeply divided by its cultural identity/language differences. It would also supposedly settle tensions between the West and Russia because Moscow would get what it wanted and would not venture further. With Ukraine split into two, its western part could eventually move closer towards Europe while its Russian-speaking East and South would establish a state allied closely with Russia. This solution, the argument goes, would best reflect the preferences of the local population. Moreover, letting parts of the South and East go might also be sensible for economic reasons. The only problem with this proposal is that none of the arguments bear close scrutiny.

Ukraine’s linguistic divisions are real. The majority of the country’s Russian-speaking population lives in the East and South; most of those who speak Ukrainian live in the centre and the West, which has traditionally been more integrated with the rest of Europe for reasons of both geography and history. But is one’s mother tongue the strongest factor influencing one’s political choices? When sociologists pose questions relating to their respondents’ identity, history or preference for a pro-EU or a pro-Russian foreign policy, the result is indeed a political map of Ukraine where the western and central regions exhibit very different preferences from those in the East and South.

But as Ukrainian political scientist Yevhen Hlibovytsky argues, research suggests that for ordinary Ukrainians there are other issues which are far more important for their political choices than language. These are mostly associated with their own security: economic security, rule of law, education or human security. When sociologists ask questions about these issues, the result is a map of political preferences which does not reflect geographical or linguistic divisions – it presents a picture of a relatively united country.

While there is some correlation between predominantly Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine and pro-Russian foreign policy preferences, language is not, in fact, the most important predictor of separatist sentiments. As American historian Timothy Snyder argues, ‘It is true that Ukrainians speak Russian, but that does not make them Russian, any more than my writing in English makes me English.’ Many Ukrainians are bilingual and speaking Russian is not the main indicator of their choices. [Continue reading…]

Paul Goble writes: By annexing Crimea, Vladimir Putin has created “the only ethnic Russian republic” within the Russian Federation, an ethnicization of political life there that will begin by threatening the Crimean Tatars with a new round of repression and end by threatening more of Russia’s neighbors and Russia itself, according to Renat Akhmetov.

In a lead article in the new issue of “Zvezda Povolzhya,” Akhmetov calls attention to an aspect of the Crimean crisis that few have underlined. By the actions he has taken, Putin has set up “the only ethnic Russian republic” [“yedinstvennaya russkaya revolyutsiya”] within the Russian Federation (“Zvezda Povolzhya, no. 10 (690), 20-26 March 2014, p. 1).

“Today,” the Kazan editor writes, “the Crimean Tatars face a difficult choice.” They can either decide to take Russian Federation citizenship or refuse to do so and become, within 30 days, foreigners on their own land, a status that he points out could allow Moscow to deal with them as it can with any other “migrants.”

The Milli Mejlis, “did not participate in the referendum, boycotted it, consider it illegal, and consequently it is more probable that the Crimean Tatars” will choose the latter status, Akhmetov says. If they do, then that will vitiate the meaning of Moscow’s offer of a reservation of 20 percent of the seats in the new Crimean parliament for the Crimean Tatars and of its declaration that Crimean Tatar will be the third official language on the peninsula.

Already, he notes, “certain leaders of Crimea have begun to say that the lands which the Crimean Tatars had obtained by unilateral action will be returned to their owners at the time of the re-registration of such acts on the basis of Russian legislation.” How the Crimean Tatars would react to that is not difficult to predict.

Moscow thus faces a choice of two options concerning what to do. Either it can make maximum concessions to the Crimean Tatars in the hopes of winning them over or at least dissuading them from resistance – concessions Russian nationalists would not like – or it can begin “a policy of ‘soft’ deportation,” one that would involve sending the Crimean Tatars to neighboring Kherson oblast.

If it chooses the latter course, Akhmetov argues, that will contribute to yet another stage in the international isolation of the Russian Federation because then what Putin would be doing would recall for too many “a rebirth of Stalin’s deportation policy.” And to sustain that would require the rebirth of Stalinism in Russia itself. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy reports: With the Russian takeover of Crimea all but complete — Russia’s Senate is expected to give final approval to the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation on Friday — Ukrainians are waiting for the other shoe to drop. And expecting that it certainly will.

Indeed, many people here believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing a game that goes far beyond reclaiming a piece of land that first became part of the Russian Empire during the rule of Catherine the Great. What they see adds up to what in Kiev is now jokingly referred to as a “Russian Spring,” a term usually meaning an uncomfortably cold season.

But while in the United States it’s fashionable to cast Putin as playing chess, his approach seems closer to the American board game “Risk” — a game of maps.

“All options remain on the table,” said Bobo Lo, a Russia expert at the British think tank Chatham House.

What are those options? For those who wonder if Putin, who famously has said the collapse of the Soviet Union 23 years ago was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, might be intent on reassembling at least part of it, the next conquest could be southeastern Ukraine.

“Crimea is definitely not the end,” said leading Ukrainian military analyst Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of Razumkov Centre, a research center in Kiev. “He will not be satisfied.”

Experts then wonder about Transnistria in Moldova, a breakaway region that has requested Russian annexation. That’s just west of Ukraine. And just north is Belarus, also discussed by Putin as historically important to Russia. [Continue reading…]